A Story Like His
by Metallic Mist
Summary: he wondered if, anyone had a story like him, where the guy didn't get the girl. AU.


A/n: This is something I wanted to write. If there's any confusing bit, just PM me. :)

**~A Story Like His~**

She was getting married in a library. The air was heavy with the scent of paper and silence sat in every corner of the room.

He turned the invitation around in his hand. It looked like an old fashioned due-date card. The front was just a photo, while the back was an invitation, printed in fading black copper plate writing. It was beautiful, and romantic. It felt like, a happy ending

Running a hand over his scar, he flipped it again to read the text. He told himself to crush it in his hand, to check the books and leave or just leave before today's event turned him into a bleeding heart.

_You are cordially invited_

_To celebrate_

_The wedding of_

_Tarika Mehra_

_Abhijeet Shrivastav_

_On Saturday afternoon_

_February the 15th_

_At four o'clock_

The invitation fluttered from shaking hands. He walked away and sat down on a chair._ This shouldn't hurt so much._ He thought to himself. It shouldn't have hurt at all, but it did.

But maybe, just maybe, he could have told her last year, or two years ago, or three, or even four years ago. He could have told three years ago when he turned up at her apartment door so she wasn't alone on Valentine's day, or three and a half when he remembered it was the day her parents died, or two years ago when he offered to take her out 'as friends' . He could have told her the thousand days in between.

He could have had her say it back.

The fact suddenly hit him like a meteorite, sudden and blinding and shaking him all over. He made it to a lone chair, put his head in hands, and fought a pain like needles behind his eyes, a harsh feeling in his throat, trying to clear his mind like he could have of any other thought. This one refused to move, though, and he pressed the heel of his palms into his eyes as the first sob broke like a silent thunderstorm.

When he surfaced from the emotional cloud, the ceremony had almost begun. He wiped his eyes, picked up one of books and opened it as he walked, as his excuse, to hide away the tears that threatened to fall. He held the book close to his face, walked through the aisles, and took a seat at the very back of the folding chairs, in the farthest corner from the center. Closing the book, he pressed it against his knees and looked to the front, waiting for his heart to step into the fire, burn and blacken and crack in the heat of pain.

She walked up the aisle barefoot, white dress floating around her. His breath vanished, following the dress up to her bare shoulders, to her hair pulled up and back, and the smile on her lips. And the ceremony began.

He didn't even hear the words being said at the front, just saw, deaf to all around him. Abhijeet took her hand, sliding a band onto it, and then she repeated it on him. He applauded with the people ahead of him, slowly standing, book falling to the ground.

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[~]\[~]

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"Congrats, Tarika. You got the kind of wedding you once told me about."

Amongst the books where he had stopped to check his eyes, they met.

She smiled. "were you crying?"

"I don't cry." he said imperiously, and then turned around to wipe his eyes with his cuff.

"Well, if you did, and were in fact crying right now, I wouldn't tell."

"I need to tell you something." He meant to say anything else.

"Then turn around and say it to me, not the shelf."

He did.

"I love you."

"huh"

"I had to tell you once."

"Why-But-You could have-"

"Told you earlier? And what would you have done? Delayed the wedding? Stopped dating him? Called it all off? You don't love me and it would have just made you uncomfortable."

He started to walk off. "If Abhijeet ever hurts you, five months or five years or five decades from now, I'll still love you, and I'll be there in an instant."

He thought absent mindedly, that weather on the towering shelves of the grand library, there was a story like his, where the guy didn't get the girl, and it was a happy ending, except for one person.

_A story like Rocky's._

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[~]\[~]

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A/n: What do you think?


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